


What Does Flour Even Look Like?

by aesthetic_warning



Series: It 2 is my supervillain backstory [4]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Nailed It! (TV) Fusion, Guys this is pretty ridiculous, Humor, M/M, Meet-Cute, Rated T for Trashmouth, Richie Tozier and Mike Wheeler Are Twins, btw i’m NOT a baker so like soz to all you pros out there, cant believe thats a tag, its a nailed it au, it’s just a chill little thing, rated teen for gratuitous swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:21:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22503187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aesthetic_warning/pseuds/aesthetic_warning
Summary: “So Richie!” Bill said, clapping his hands together as he looked at the display blocking them from seeing Richie’s final product. “You gonna show us these cookies or what?”He nodded a bit reluctantly, smiling though, as he pressed the button on the side of his display case to drop down the opaque screen in front of the cookies. When the judges saw them, Eddie cackled.“Richie!” he shouted in between wheezes, “That looks like literal SHIT!”
Relationships: Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon (minor), Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: It 2 is my supervillain backstory [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1480994
Comments: 10
Kudos: 102





	1. Baker’s Choice

**Author's Note:**

> I was watching an episode of Nailed It, eating pancakes for dinner, thinking “god i need to write SOMETHING” and then i was like “ha ha nailed it, i love It” and then i dropped my pancakes

“You have 45 minutes! Go!” Bill Denbrough shouted at the three contestants, and Richie hurried over to his station, cookie in hand. The clock ticked away as he read through the instructions, not in any particular hurry, unlike the other “bakers”- which was less the result of confidence in his cookie making ability, and more because he was making decisions with the same level of thought as someone with a peanut allergy deciding whether or not to try the Pad Thai. 

Richie’s task was to recreate what was in front of him from scratch, the dessert in question being a cookie shaped and decorated like a bear, but a bear who wouldn’t care whether or not you started forest fires. He got out his ingredients with ease, hoping that unlike the people he was competing against- Stan Urine, maybe, and a girl that looks like Molly Ringwald -he would be relaxed enough to not fuck something up. 

“How’s it going over there, Richie?” Bill shouted from the judges table, where he was joined by Ben Hanscome, their regular pastry expert, and the special guest judge, Eddie Kaspbrak, a semi-famous baker with his own popular bakery, who, in Richie’s opinion, was the cutest person on the entire fucking planet. 

“Gotta say Big Bill,” he started, pausing when he heard Bill laugh in shock at the nickname. “it’s going pretty fucking swell,” 

“You can’t cuss on this show, dipshit,” Cute Eddie said, frowning at Richie while he laughed. 

“I can already tell this was a mistake,” Bill said to Ben, loudly enough so that everyone could hear. He chuckled, sent a wink in Cute Eddie’s direction, and then got back to work on rolling out his cookie dough. His hands were covered in butter because he thought softened butter meant mushy butter, not warm butter, so it was difficult to get a firm grip on his rolling pin. 

He eventually rolled it out to what he hoped was flat enough to bake well in the oven, not exactly sure what that exact width was, and wished for the best. Or close to the best, at least. He knew his baking skills, and he was no Martha Stewart. He looked down at the dough and sighed, hoping Ben and Molly in the station next to him would stop flirting so he could ask a question, like when the teacher is joking around with the smart kids in class instead of helping out the genuine dumbasses who need help. 

After a few more minutes of talking and Richie just standing there, he decided to interrupt and hope he didn’t look like too much of a dick in the final cut. 

“Hey so am I supposed to cut out the shape of my bear before or after I bake my cookies?” He asked, open to answers from anyone, but question directed at Eddie, who scoffed at him. 

“How about instead of asking us, which seems like cheating, you read your recipe sheet?” He said in a way that was somehow both passive aggressive and incredibly adorable. 

“Bold of you to assume I can read, cutie,” 

“Oh yeah Jared? Then how did you sign up to get on the show?” Eddie said, ignoring the flirting to fully insult Richie. It’s important to remember that Eddie is a judge, sitting at the judges table with other judges, which is a good 45-50 feet away from his station. That distance combined with the background noises of other contestants cussing at their icing, blenders, and the crew quietly chatting amongst themselves, caused Richie and Eddie to have to shout to hear each other. 

“How are you so sure that I did?” He said, smirking 

“Oh I’m not really sure, but the fact that you’re standing here arguing with me instead of baking your cookies is a pretty big hint,” 

“I can assure you that I did not sign up for this”

“Did you just walk onto set or something?” Ben asked, somewhat alarmed, leading Richie to believe he genuinely thought that could happen. 

“No, my dickass brother signed me up as part of our ongoing prank war,” He said, at this point having completely forgotten that he still had to make cookies. 

“How did it not occur to you that he was doing something when he started recording you baking? That had to have been pretty suspicious man,” Eddie reasoned, also forgetting that Richie was supposed to be making cookies. 

“When he what?”

“He sent in a recording of you baking, that’s mandatory to get on the show,” Bill told him, confused by his confusion. “Everyone did,”

“The last time I baked anything was when I was in fifth grade and he signed me up to make cupcakes for a bake sale, so I don’t think it was me,” he said, the story reminding him that he was literally in a competition to bake cookies. 

“Wait so what the fuck was that video?” Eddie asked, distracting him again because damn, he was just too fucking cute to ignore. 

“I don’t- oh man it was totally him! We’re identical twins. The little shit. He’s been pulling this stunt since he stole my date to the Winter Formal in 8th grade and got away with pretending to be me,” Richie said, deciding to just go with his gut and cut the shape of the bear out as he was talking. “I bet he had his fiancé record him pretending to be me. Gotta say, that’s actually pretty epic, good one Mike,” he said, looking directly into the camera. 

Bill announced that there was 20 minutes left on the clock, but literally neither Richie nor Eddie cared, as they continued talking about literally anything. “So how long have your brother and his fiancé been together?” Eddie asked as Richie attempted to make icing, mistakenly using flour instead of powdered sugar. Who can even mix those two up? They’re two completely different shades of white, two different textures and consistencies, and two different smells. Really goes to show how incredibly distracted by Eddie the man was. 

“Well they’re That Couple that’s been best friends that kiss each other since kindergarten, so they’ve never really NOT been dating,” he explained, laughing, while also pouring his fucked up icing down the sink. “I bet he’s real happy I’m sharing his private life on Netflix too,” he tried to pull his tray of cookies out of the oven, nearly burning himself on the hot pan because he was barely holding the oven mit, and successfully placed them on the counter. They were all hideously deformed. 

“Oh yeah I’m sure your brother is going to have a lot to say to you when you next see him,” Bill said, reminding Richie that he and Eddie were not alone in conversation. 

“I mean, I was talking about his fiancé, but you’re right too,” he said, grabbing a cookie off the tray and taking a bite, which was a huge mistake, as it was fresh out of the oven and thus was burning hot. He tried to rapidly breathe out to cool his tongue down, but just ended up making a fool of himself. 

Moving back to his icing, Richie tried to figure out what he did wrong. He scratched his head, looked at the recipe, looked back at the ingredients, back at the recipe, back at the ingredients, and then decided to just try again. 

“Hey Richie!” Ben shouted, stopping him from pouring the sugar (flour) into the bowl. 

“What’s crackalackin, Benny Boy?” Richie said, looking over in confusion at the judges table. Before Ben could say anything, Eddie shouted over him. 

“What I’m about to do is purely out of pity,” Eddie said, pointing to his station, about to give him some (desperately needed) help. 

“What a coincidence, that’s exactly what I said to your mom last night,” Richie said, like a moronic idiot who is a dumb bitch. Eddie frowned in an adorable way, and looked away from Rich. 

“Nevermind. I was going to help you, but now I’ve decided I’m not in the mood,” 

Ben smiled at the two in the same way you smile at toddlers who are fighting over who gets to use the special orange crayon, while there are 4 other orange crayons available to use, and looked towards Richie. “I’ll help you, buddy,” he said, getting up to walk towards Richie’s station. He held up the container of flour, and looked down at it. 

“Ben are you going to drool over my ingredients, or are you going to help me win?” Richie asked in a fake whiny voice, making the other man chuckle.

“Rich, can you tell me what this is?” He asked, tilting the jar of flour so Richie could see inside of it. The man shrugged. 

“Powdered Sugar?” Eddie cackled from the judges table. 

“Richard this is flour,” 

With seven minutes left and no icing, Richie had no idea what he was going to do. He decided to go back into the supply area, where it was just shelves full of baking supplies like candies, flavorings, dyes, and-

“Holy shit CHOCOLATE, I’m a genius,” he grabbed some bins of chocolate candy melts, and ran back to his kitchen to get them liquidly like fondue, because he loves fondue, and honestly thinks people should provide others with fondue more often. 

He spent 2 minutes looking for the microwave, and 2 minutes looking through the supplies earlier, which left him with a total of 3 minutes to microwave, decorate, and plate his cookies. 

Apparently it takes more than a couple of minutes in a low powered microwave to fully melt chocolate, so with 1 minute remaining, he grabbed the hot bowl, almost burned himself, unsuccessfully tried to stir away the big clumps, dipped the cookies in the mix, and dropped them on the plate right as Bill shouted that they were out of time. One cookie broke in half. 

Bill, Ben and Eddie all got up from their table to judge the cookies made. From just a glance at the contestants, it was clear who thought they had done the best- obviously Richie. 

The first person they stopped at was Beverly’s station, he learned her name was, and they all cackled when she revealed her cookie that was supposed to look like a bumble bee. Don’t be alarmed, she was laughing too. It looked nothing like a bee. Richie hadn’t even known it was a bee, until she said it. He had assumed it was some weird mutant lemon that was rotting and also had eyes. 

They each took a small bite from the cookie (except Bill, who fearlessly- or recklessly- shoved half of it into his mouth), thinking about the taste of the dough for the few moments of bliss before the icing hit their tongues. Eddie looked like he wanted to vomit, which was a cute look on him, as usual. 

“Beverly what did you do to the frosting?” Bill asked, laughing through his pain. When she shrugged, Ben, who had been watching her for most of the last 45 minutes in a totally non creepy way, stepped in. 

“I noticed you had put a lot of extra food dye in your icing, and also when you added the extra sugar, which was completely unnecessary, you added salt instead,” he said in a soft and loving voice that one would not expect from someone absolutely ripping someone’s culinary skills to shreds.

Eddie looked at her with deep regret. “You added so much black food dye that Bill’s toilet is going to be stained green for weeks,” he told her, causing everyone to laugh at his misery. Schadenfreude is really that bitch huh. 

They moved on to Richie, all of the judges not expecting very much out of him, given the fact that he spent literally half of his totally baking time just flirting with Eddie. 

“So Richie!” Bill said, clapping his hands together as he looked at the display case blocking them from seeing Richie’s final product. “You gonna show us these cookies or what?” 

He nodded a bit reluctantly, smiling though, as he pressed the button on the side of his display case to drop down the opaque screen in front of the cookies. When the judges saw them, Eddie cackled. 

“Richie!” he shouted in between wheezes, “That looks like literal SHIT!” 

“How much of this episode are we going to have to cut?” Bill yelled out towards the camera and production crew, most of which shrugged. Richie and Eddie were still laughing. 

It made sense that they were laughing. Richie’s cookies did, in fact, look like someone who was lactose intolerant drank a gallon of milk, downed 14 shots of pepto-diarrhea, and then took a dump on Richie’s plate. The misshapen cookies dipped in half melted chocolate really working together to create the illusion. 

“There’s no way I’m putting that anywhere near my mouth,”

“That’s the exact opposite of what your mom was saying last night,” Richie shot back, smirking at the immediate reaction from Eddie. The cutie’s eyebrows got all angry and caused a crease in between them, and he was practically foaming at the mouth. 

“What, my dead mom really had a hankering for your shitty cookies, huh?” Eddie sounded and looked furious, but he  _ also _ looked like he was on the brink of needing emergency care to help get his breath back from laughing too hard. 

They all ended up trying the cookies, and when Eddie realized how underdone they were, he almost fucking fell on the ground from laughing so hard. 

“This is your fault! My cookies are underdone! Your cute ass was  _ distracting _ me from making them!” Richie defended himself, completely ignoring the other two judges until Ben cleared his throat in a kind way. Not in a rude and interrupting way that rich people who think they’re better than you do in movies all the time, but like a stern but loving first grade teacher trying to get the attention of his rowdy but caring class. 

Richie looked at Ben expectantly, knowing he was about to give him some bonafide baking advice. “Next time I would bake them for longer at a lower temperature. I’m disappointed in your lack of icing, but you improvised, and I admire that,” 

Richie was near tears. “Thank you, that might be the most genuinely nice thing I’ve ever heard,” He said, which was a total hyperbole. 

After spending another few moments at Richie’s station (they had been trying to leave for what felt like ages but he and Eddie kept fucking arguing). 

Finally, they moved onto Stan, who had incredibly appetizing looking bird cookies. Honestly they were breathtaking. Not genuinely breathtaking, as he was still on Nailed It, but for someone with obviously little to no baking skills, those cookies looked like they were sent down from God. 

“Wow Stan I’m genuinely excited to try yours,” Bill said, breathlessly, as the cookies, as stated earlier, were breathtaking. The man smiled shyly and offered the judges his cookies, who made faces indistinguishable from the faces of people mid-orgasm in pornos. 

It was safe to say they enjoyed the cookies, and the icing was on point, for someone with less than mediocre baking skills. The two professional bakers and one charismatic host deeply admired those cookies. 

The three made the long 50 foot walk back to their table, and sat down, looking at the contestants expectantly. 

“Ok bakers. It’s time to decide the winner of the first competition,” Bill explained, watching the nervous (Stan), amused (Richie), and unexpecting (Beverly) expressions on their faces. 

“Yeah we all know who it’s going to be,” Richie interrupted, looking over at Stan, whose face flushed. “Me, just pay up now,” he said, and Eddie sighed. 

“You really don’t understand how this works do you?” He asked, glaring at the moron. Richie shrugged. Bill sighed. 

“There are 2 competitions, the first one being Baker’s Choice- which you just did. The winner of Baker’s Choice gets a prize and a cool hat, and the winner of the second competition gets the prize money,” Bill said, obviously peed off from having to explain the rules for the second time. Richie nodded in understanding, but he totally didn’t understand it at all. 

After a few moments of silence to build tension, Bill smiled. “Stan! Congrats! Let’s see your prize- Oh Mikey!!!” he shouted, waving over a cheerful looking man who was obviously a cameraman, rolling in a cart with a beautiful blue stand mixer on top. 

“Not only do you get to enjoy this new stand mixer, but you also get the golden chef’s hat!” Ben told him, handing him the gold sequined hat, motioning for Stan to try it on. He did, and was super reluctant and embarrassed about it. The dude did NOT want to wear that eyesore

“Now bakers!” Bill shouted, clapping his hands together. “On to round two!” 


	2. Round 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They stared at his ‘elephant’, for lack of a better word, for a few seconds, before Eddie spoke up. 
> 
> “This looks like what you’d get if you asked a 15 year old who only speaks a little bit of English to sculpt what they think depression looks like,”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I saw Sonic today with my friend and I gotta say- it was significantly better than I expected

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Richie shouted as he tried to mix his batter, that for some reason, was nearly the consistency of water. From the judges table, Ben shouted at him. 

“Richie! I think maybe this time you might have used powdered sugar instead of flour!” he loudly informed him, but phrasing it in a way that meant ‘hey, maybe Richie didn’t mix up the flour and sugar again, there’s a chance the batter is runny because of something else,’ when in actuality, Ben saw him pour powdered sugar into his batter, he had witnessed the buffoonery. There was no question about what Richie fucked up. 

He was upset, obviously, about his failing cake, but not  _ too _ upset. After all, he hadn’t even signed himself up for the show, that was all Mike. Richie was almost ashamed to admit how easy it was for his brother to get him to do this- just the promise of an ice cream cone if he accompanied him on his “errands”. Errands that had a 4 hour drive that Richie hadn’t even found suspicious. 

“If you work quickly, you can make new batter and probably save your ass and actually win the prize money,” Eddie shouted at him, hands cupped around his mouth less for the help of sound, and more for dramatic effect. So because Richie was a sucker for Eddie and money, he dumped his mixing bowl, and this new time, actually grabbed the flour. Or what he hoped was the flour. 

Looking up to the judges table worriedly, he lifted the jar above his head and pointed to it. “How do I know if this is powdered sugar or flour?” Ben considered the question, before answering with an elaborate explanation that, while nice for a learning environment, isn’t desired in a timed baking competition 

“Well powdered sugar and flour have two wildly different colors, textures, consistencies, and tastes-“ 

“Got it!” Richie said, before licking his finger and sticking it in the jar. Every judge reacted in a different sort of panic. Ben was worried that Richie was going to screw up, maybe spill his flour, and not be able to complete the task. 

Bill was panicked because Richie just contaminated that entire gigantic jar of flour they would now need to throw out and completely replace. 

And Eddie:

“I swear to fucking  _ god _ Richie if you put any of that raw flour near your fucking  _ mouth I’ll fucking kill you before the E.Coli has a fucking chance to, you fucking INBRED _ -“ 

Richie looked up in shock at the man. “Aw- Eds you  _ do _ care!” he gushed, clasping his hands and bringing them up to his chest, over exaggeratedly beating his eyelashes. “Someone should edit romantic music and one of those ‘crowd aww sound’ things,” Richie said suddenly, ending the bit, hopefully to pay more attention to the mysterious white powder in his hands. Maybe it was cocaine. That would make for a good cake. 

He smelled the jar and decided it didn’t smell very sugary, and instead smelled the way someone would describe wood shavings smelled like if they had never even seen a piece of wood before. Richie took the measurements of the flour, pouring it into a bowl along with his other ingredients, before looking up again. 

“Thanks for lookin’ out for me, cutie!” he shouted half-jokingly to Eddie, smiling as he blushed at the nickname. Well he blushed, or became red in the face with anger. One of the two, either was possible. 

Richie continued to mix the ingredients together for his cake recipe, needing 3 whole cakes to be able to sculpt the large, hyper realistic elephant that he had to  _ perfect _ in order to win the ten thousand dollar prize. 

He poured his dry ingredients into the stand mixer to mix with the eggs and sugar, but hadn’t realized that just dumping it in may have been a bad idea. Especially considering the fact that the mixer had been on, and moving at quite a fast speed. 

Richie determined that he had made a mistake when his entire front was suddenly coated in a thick layer of flour (or powdered sugar, he still wasn’t entirely certain which was which). From a distance, it absolutely looks like he was totally nude. 

“Oop. Clean up in aisle six…” Bill called out, half jokingly but also half serious, because the amount of flour on the floor was now definitely a hazard. Richie smiled sheepishly, stepping away from the spill.

The cleaning crew swiftly arrived, sweeping up the flour (or powdered sugar, he literally couldn’t tell the difference), but regretfully couldn’t do anything to help Richie with the powder on his body that, sadly, wasn’t cocaine. 

So, with his clothes probably ruined, and having to start over from the beginning with his cake, he began trying to remake the batter. 

“Eddie!” He called out, looking up at the table where the man in question and Bill were currently learning how to make the elephant skin texture required on the cakes from Ben. The three all glanced up at Richie, varying levels of dread on each of their faces. 

“What Richie? Do you want me to help you cheat? Absolutely not!” He shouted, glaring at him, but even from the distance, Richie could tell his anger wasn’t genuine, and that made his heart  _ flutter _ . 

“Literally just help me bake this cake!” He shouted, pointing to the display elephant cake in front of his table, used to show him exactly what he was supposed to be doing, which wasn’t helping all that much, seeing as he was a solid 15 minutes into his 2 hours, and he still hadn’t gotten the first step done. 

Bill gave him a look, and pointed at the obnoxious red button on Richie’s workstation. “In order for him to help you, you have to press the Panic Button Rich!” he told him with a voice that sounds so nice, but was delivering him the worst news. 

Well, not the  _ worst _ news. He still genuinely didn’t care about anything in this competition except the money, and getting Eddie’s number. 

He slammed his hand on the button. 

“PANIC! AHHHHHHHHHH!” Bill screamed, jumping out of his seat and running around, as Ben gently pushed Eddie out of his seat. He walked over to Richie, which he realized was the very first moment he had seen Eddie out of the chair. Standing next to the man and admiring him was wildly different than he ever imagined. 

“Holy shit shortstack! How tall are you, what, four even?” 

“Do you want help or not, fuckface?”

Richie nodded, deciding not to voice his thought about letting Eddie have his way with his face  _ any _ time, and moved out of the way to let him have his way with the ingredients and equipment. 

“So far you’ve managed to fuck up 2 batters, so I’m glad you decided to get help,” he started, already taking the measurements of the flour and sugar without even looking at the recipe- obviously, because he’s a professional baker, and knows what he’s doing. Clearly he should be good at this, but that doesn’t stop Richie from being one wrong move away from a boner while watching him. 

Richie watched intently as Eddie baked, really understanding why the man was as successful as he was. He was a machine in the kitchen, he knew exactly what to do before it even had to be done. He could make a baked good by simply  _ willing _ it into existence. 

He was staring so distractedly at Eddie that he hadn’t even realized he was talking. 

“-and you mix all your wet ingredients and dry ingredients separately, before slowly adding the dry ingredients,” he explained, pouring a bowl of white powder into the slowly mixing stand mixer, successfully not ruining the kitchen, which wasn’t a surprise to anyone. 

Just as he set the bowl back down, the timer went off again, and Eddie had to leave. Waving him off like a crowd of people waved off the passengers of the Titanic, Richie smiled, and shouted a quick  _ ‘thanks!’ _ , before pouring his now mixed batter into the necessary pans. 

Right after he put his cakes into the oven, an alarm started blaring throughout the room. What was going on. Was the kitchen on fire? Did someone break in? Was it just Ben making a horrifyingly realistic alarm noise with his mouth? 

None of the above. 

Turns out, because she failed so miserably in the last round, Bev was given a second, cooler button along with her panic button. It allowed for Ben to go and help her work, while for 1 minute the other two contestants were supposed to be distracted by the remaining judges. 

This had been explained in detail before the round even started, but Richie hadn’t been paying attention at all, probably preoccupied with staring at Eddie. 

Eddie who was once again walking towards his station, a look of boredom on his face. 

“I’m supposed to distract you,” he said, his tone what was honestly the most monotone sounding thing he had ever heard. It rivaled Roz’s voice from Monsters Inc. 

“I can think of something really distracting we could be doing right now,” Richie said, winking flirtatiously, and almost choked on air when Eddie looked like he was  _ actually considering it.  _

Eddie looked over at Bill, who was shouting at Stan, then looked back at the large room filled with different ingredients and supplies off the right of the main stage. He then looked back at Richie. 

“Wanna go make out?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” 

  
  
  


Bill sat down at the judges table, continuing to watch Stan work even after distracting the man. He had significantly more class than Eddie, and wouldn’t do anything flirty or provocative towards Stan, but he allowed himself the chance to admire him from afar. 

He turned to Ben, and smiled. 

“What do you think the odds of Mikey bringing us margaritas are?” 

“God Bill, you alcoholic,” 

It turns out, the odds were 100%, and this was proven when a cart was rolled out by Bill’s absolute  _ favorite _ cameraman, carrying a margarita mixer and ingredients on top. The two men cheered. 

Bill busied himself with making the drinks, which was significantly easier than making elephant skin fondant, but still not as easy as it would be to just have a robot butler make his margaritas. 

After a good half an hour, he had made 3 drinks, one for each of the judges, and turned to Eddie, smiling proudly as he went to hand him the mediocre looking beverage. 

Or he  _ would _ have handed him the margarita, had Eddie even been sitting there. He quickly turned back to ben. 

“Where the fuck is Eddie? He’s this episode’s money maker, Benjamin! He’s adorable!” 

Bill turned around to glare at Richie, a gut instinct, as he had expected the man to say something along the lines of ‘don’t I know it!’ or something to the same effect. 

Instead, he was (relatively) shocked to find Richie’s workstation completely empty. A feeling of

dread began to pool in the pit of his stomach. 

That dread increased tenfold when he smelled smoke. 

He smelled smoke, because Richie’s cakes were burning in his oven. 

“ACTUAL PANIC!” Bill shouted, like an idiot, just as smoke started slowly seeking out of the oven. These isolated events were enough to cause alarm, but both at once caused a chain reaction, that somehow resulted in Bev’s face being covered in pink frosting, Mike rushing in with a fire extinguisher, and half of Stan’s cake on the floor. 

It also caused Richie and Eddie to come rushing out from the supply area, hair messy (though it always was for Richie), shirts rumpled, and faces flushed red. 

Bill gasped. 

“You two were  _ making out _ ! That’s so inappropriate for the show! Wow!” For some reason, he was genuinely shocked. It wasn’t even a little bit shocking that Eddie and Richie had finally resolved their sexual tension though. 

“Shut up Bill, I’m busy,” Richie said, walking backwards over to his station, meaning he didn’t realize his oven had been on fire until he was practically face to face with it. “What!” 

“Oh Rich, by the way, you left your cakes in for too long, they burned,” Ben politely informed him, as Ben is very polite. However, it would have been  _ more _ polite for Ben to have removed Richie’s cakes from the oven when it seemed like they were done cooking, but sadly that was against the rules. 

Richie looked sadly on as the emergency crew pulled his burnt cakes out of the smoking oven, and looked even more sadly at the clock displaying a whopping 30 minutes left. 30 minutes was not nearly enough time to bake and decorate a cake. 

So he decided to improvise. 

While he and Eddie had been making out, he had been pushed against something startlingly soft for the ground they were both laying on, when he realized he was on top of Rice Krispy Treats that had fallen off of the shelf. It hadn’t meant very much to him back then, 10 minutes seeming so long ago, but now it was like an angel shining through the grey clouds over a bloody battlefield. 

Richie ran over to the supply area, knowing there was no time to spare, and quickly looked around for where he and Eddie had found the treats. 

The good news was: he found them, and could now move on to shaping and decorating. 

The bad news was: they were all smashed due to the collective weight of two grown men on top of them. A sheet of Marshmallow cereal in seran wrap wasn’t very stable, after all. 

He grabbed all the rice krispies he could fit in his arms, and rushed back to his workstation to start trying to shape it into the form of an elephant. He was not expecting anything good to come out of that. 

Which was totally reasonable, seeing as how because of the fact that all of the treats were smashed flat, he was having a very difficult time shaping them without having them droop and eventually lose their form. 

“How should I do this?” he shouted out in the vague, general direction of the judges table, hoping one of them would answer, which Ben, sweet, kind, thoughtful Ben, did. 

“Ok so you’re going to want some structure, like wire-“ 

“Got it! Thanks Benny Boy!” With that he frantically started digging through the drawers and cabinets in his station, hoping desperately that he would find what he needed. 

He did not. 

Instead, he decided, once again, to improvise.

Richie grabbed a butter knife, and jabbed it into his rice krispy treat the same way you jab an epipen into the thigh of someone having a severe allergic reaction. He then tried to mold the krispies around the knife, wishing he had more time, but not regretting even a little bit the make out session with Eddie.

He cheered when he realized he had successfully made a leg for the elephant, and quickly then got to work making the rest of the body parts out of different cooking utensils. 

By now the clock was down to 15 minutes, meaning he had 15 minutes to completely decorate his now assembled elephant that was supposed to be made out of cake, and looked more like a melted stegosaurus than any elephant. 

“Eddie how should I decorate this bad boy?” Richie shouted over, looking up and smiling at the man who looked so deeply disappointed in him, which was rich considering the fact that the only reason he was using rice krispy treats was  _ because _ Eddie had distracted him so much. 

“You don’t have enough time to both make buttercream  _ and _ apply it to the elephant, so I’d say just add sprinkles and call it a day. You have literally no chance of winning with no cake,” he said flatly, his voice, while monotone and stating facts about Richie’s imminent doom, still brought butterflies to his stomach. 

“Oh you old fox, you! This is no place for those sweet words!” Richie said, while running back, once again, to the supply area. He looked around for some nice blue sprinkles, when he saw something shiny, and like some kind of bird, immediately went to investigate. 

He then, for the third and hopefully final time, decided to improvise. 

“Eddie I’m about to completely disregard your suggestion and instead do my own thing!” he shouted as he picked up the airbrush and food dye. As he ran back to his station, he decided to pick up a hobby, like jogging, to help him with his cardio. He’d never survive the zombie apocalypse in the state he’s in. 

It was difficult to figure out exactly how to work the airbrush, as he had never actually tried anything like it. Which is why you can’t really blame him for accidentally staining his arms and half of his face blue. Really, this was incredibly likely to have happened, and someone should have taken an extra precaution to make sure it didn’t. 

Eventually, with a lot of help from Ben, lovely, kind, Ben, Richie figured out how to spray paint his rice krispy treat sculpture blue. Just in time, really, seeing as how there was a solid 3 minutes left on the clock for him to precariously move the elephant, that was staying together from sheer force of will alone, into the display case. 

“One minute left!” Bill’s voice rose above the chaos of the contestants, similar to how an alarm completely overpowers all other sounds in your dream when it’s 6:30 and you’re supposed to wake up now, but then you realize it’s a holiday and you have school off, but you forgot to turn off your alarm, so now you’re awake at 6:30 on a Monday with nothing to do. That’s what Bill’s voice is like. 

Richie watched as Stan and Bev put their cakes on their displays, admiring the fact that they both clearly had cake somewhere in their elephants. 

All too soon, the time was over, and it was time for Bill, Ben, and Eddie to all start judging. They started with Beverly. 

When she lowered the window in front of her cake, Richie could tell Eddie was trying his absolute hardest not to laugh. 

“Hey Beverly, why is your elephant pink?” Bill asked, looking at her cake, before looking back at the display cake and confirming that yep, it was clearly supposed to be a blue-grey elephant. 

“I mean obviously you could take some creative liberties and-”

“What do you mean it’s pink?” She interrupted Ben, looking at her cake in confusion. Bill stared at her in shock. 

“I mean the intentions were to make a blue or grey cake, but you made yours pink,”

“Bill, I made my cake grey,” Bev told him, concern in her eyes, but Richie had a gut feeling that the concern was for herself, not any of the judges. 

“Beverly, that cake is the color of Pepto Bismol,” 

“Pepto Bismol is grey, that’s why nobody likes it, because it looks and tastes gross,” She insisted, desperately hoping they were playing a mean prank on her. 

“Isn’t Pepto branded and known for being a gross pink color?” Eddie asked, looking at the cake in disgust now that Bill had made the comparison to Pepto. 

“No, I should know Pepto is grey, it’s what I used to color my fondant,” 

“Bev we are trying to tell you that your elephant is literally not grey, it’s pink,” 

“No, this is pink,” She told them, clearly doubting what she herself was saying, as she pointed to a light red spatula on her counter. 

“Beverly, I think you might be colorblind,” 

After that shocking realization, resulting in Bev sitting on the floor muttering ‘I’m a fashion designer. How have I never known I can’t see pink?’, the judges moved on to Richie’s station. 

“I have literally 0 expectations. You made no cake,” Bill told him, patting him on the shoulder, before motioning for him to drop the window and show off his creation, which Richie happily did. 

They stared at his ‘elephant’, for lack of a better word, for a few seconds, before Eddie spoke up. 

“This looks like what you’d get if you asked a 15 year old who only speaks a little bit of English to sculpt what they think depression looks like,” he told him bluntly, and Richie stared at him for a good couple of moments, before bursting out into laughter. 

He was still laughing when they once again moved on, this time to Stan’s station, where he had baked something that, given a little bit more time, might have looked like an elephant. Right now it looked like someone who saw an elephant once tried to describe it to someone who had  _ never _ seen an elephant, and also didn’t have arms.

They admired it though, as it was the closest one to resembling an elephant, and that’s all that they wanted from the contestants. 

“Ok bakers! Take the best slice from your cake, and bring it up here for us to taste,” Bill said, moving back to his table with Eddie and Ben like they were some kind of clique in high school, and Richie couldn’t sit at their table, but it didn’t matter, because Richie couldn’t sit anywhere, because Richie had hemorrhoids. 

Bev gasped. “You guys are trying the cakes?” she shouted, looking back at her pink elephant in a panic. “But Pepto tastes so gross, oh my god, I'm so sorry for this,” she told them as she sliced the cake, to reveal the actual cake and frosting was also pink. Probably because of the Pepto she used. How she acquired Pepto, nobody knew. Bill was certainly afraid at this point. 

Stan and Richie cut their cakes without fuss, plating their slices and bringing them to the judges table without any disasters happening in between, which Bill considered an absolute win. 

The first cake they tried was Beverly’s, both because she was at Station 1, and because they wanted to get that cake out of the way as soon as possible. Tentatively, they all took as small of a bite as possible. 

That means that when they each spit out the cake in immediate disgust, it was as small of a pile of half chewed food and spit as possible. 

“Well the texture isn’t horrible,” Ben noted as both Bill and Eddie unscrewed their water bottles and chugged as quickly as they could. 

“The taste sure fucking is though,” Eddie told her as soon as he was done cleansing his palate. 

After another minute of gently criticizing Bev about her cake, they moved on to Richie’s. 

Bill stared at the slice for a moment, before looking up at the man. 

“Richard did you make anything substantial in the past 2 hours? Because this is literally rice krispy treat and food dye from Nailed It’s supplies,” Bill said, looking up at him with a slightly amused but mostly blank face. Richie smiled. 

“I made a deep connection with someone?” He said nervously, looking over to Eddie who was blushing furiously and pointedly looking away from Richie, but also smiling, so that was a point in Rich’s favor!

“If this show was Chopped, we wouldn’t even have to look at Stan’s cake to know that you’d be on the Chopping Block, that’s what you’ve given to us,” Eddie told him, pushing the plate away without even taking a bite. 

They moved on to Stan. When they all took a bite of his cake, the look of shock passed around their faces due to their expectations being so low because of the other two contestants, was almost comical. 

It was so good that Bill even went in for a second bite. 

“I am blown away. Not only do you actually have a cake, but it doesn’t make me want to vomit,  _ and _ the texture is adequate! Well done,” Eddie said, smiling at Stan who was looking at him with both gratitude and offense at the texture comment. 

After what was supposed to be a few minutes for the judges to decide the winner, but was in actuality 3 seconds just to confirm what everyone already knew, they looked at the contestants. 

“Ok bakers! After a lot of hard work from most of you- not all of you-“ Bill looked at Richie. “and serious deliberation-“ at this Eddie made a ‘ _ did we really’ _ face, “we have decided the winner of this episode of Nailed It,” Bill said, looking around at the contestants. 

When Richie looked at him, Bill shook his head. 

“You know it wasn’t you,” 

Ben motioned for Mike to come forward with the trophy, which looked like if a trophy was a Nazi in Indiana Jones at the end when they looked in the box thing. Bill smiled. 

“The winner of this episode of Nailed It is…” he said, pausing to hype it up, “STANLEY! Congratulations!” He shouted, cheering as Eddie pulled out the money gun and started blasting the fake cash around the floor. Stan smiled shyly, accepting the congratulatory hug from Bev and Richie. 

After all the cheering died down, and Stan and Bev were busy talking with Ben, Mike and Bill, Richie walked over to Eddie, who was fiddling with one of the fake dollars that had landed on the table. 

“So, can I get your number, cutie?” He asked, looking hopefully at the man in front of him. Eddie smirked. 

“Sorry, I only date people who know the difference between powdered sugar and flour,” he said, taking the fake dollar and patting it onto Richie’s chest as he walked away. 

Disappointed, Richie looked down at the bill, eyes widening as he saw what was written on the back. 

**_Call me <3 _ **

Along with a number, in Eddie’s adorably perfect handwriting. 

Sure he didn’t win the prize money or the fucked up trophy, but right now Richie sure felt like a winner. 

**Author's Note:**

> writing this cost me so much screentime you nerds so smash that like button, and don’t forget to subscribe to my channel, bye youtube!


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